The invention relates to a manually controlled machine for handling articles in order to fill or to empty packing cases in which the articles are stowed.
Such a machine is mainly made for simultaneously displacing a plurality of articles which are to be placed in a case in order to constitute therein successive superposed layers or which are to be removed from this case, layer after layer. This machine is provided with gripping means, which do not form part of the invention and which are adapted to the articles to be displaced. Gripping means which are particularly suitable for equipping the machine of the invention are suction cups due to their versatility.
To give a better idea, the example will be taken hereinafter of a machine serving to fill or to empty containers used for transporting bottles lying flat; this example is frequently met with among wine producers who have to dispatch small or average quantities of full bottles. It is not profitable for these producers to equip themselves with automatic machines, which exist on the market, and whose yield attains 12 000 bottles per hour and whose cost of acquisition and service-maintenance exceeds their possibilities.
There is therefore a real need, which has not been satisfied up to the present, for a considerably less expensive machine than the high-yield automatic machines, which still calls upon manual intervention, but which can furnish the necessary forces so that the role of the man-power is devoted only to controlling the machine. As the most unpleasant part of the work is attributed to the machine, the rate of production may be accelerated; in addition, due to the power of the machine, it is possible to displace loads which exceed human capacities so that, as a whole, the number of bottles handled is considerably greater than if work were purely manual, as is the case up to the present.
The example chosen here, that of full bottles which are to be laid flat in a container, is a good example of difficult work even when it is carried out manually. The difficulty comes from the fact that the bottles are heavy since they are full and that they must be stowed head-to-tail; this arrangement is, in fact, the one allowing the maximum number of bottles to be disposed in the available inner volume of the containers currently used at present.
Containers which are not generally used for transporting full bottles lying flat have dimensions such that superposed successive layers are housed therein and, in each layer, two rows of bottles in head to tail arrangement are placed widthwise. To facilitate wedging, in the two rows of a layer, the bottles must be directed in opposite directions.